LEWISPORTE, NL – Megan Moores may not be a police officer, but she did participate in her first arrest this past weekend in Lewisporte.

After leaving the Mussel Bed Soiree concert, the Grand Falls-Windsor resident noticed something seemed wrong with a truck driving in front of her mother’s vehicle. The blue Toyota truck was moving erratically and at varied speeds, Moores says she was immediately concerned the driver could be impaired.

“He would go about 20 kilometres per hour, then when my Mom would beep the horn he’d speed up,” Moores told the Pilot. “He was swerving all over the road and up over the curb a couple of times.”

Already on her cell phone with the RCMP to report the driver, Moores says at first she had no intention of getting any more involved in the situation. However, another trip over the curb by the operator of the blue Toyota, narrowly missing a group of pedestrians, changed her mind.

“He was really close to hitting them,” said Moores. “I asked her (the dispatch officer) could I do a citizens arrest, and she put me on hold to check.”

Before the officer on the phone could come back to the call, Moores says the truck pulled into a restaurant parking lot and entered the drive-thru, in the wrong direction. That’s when Moores sprang into action.

“At this point he was going slow enough I knew if I had too, I could jump into his vehicle,” said Moores. “So I ran up and yelled at him to stop his vehicle, so he looked at me really weird and tried to keep going, so I reached for the door handle and he sped up”

Moores says she then slapped the side of the vehicle and again yelled at the driver, telling him to stop the truck as police were on the way.

At this point Moores says the driver complied and waited for police to arrive. The suspected impaired driver was then taken into custody and brought to the local detachment for further investigation.

Moores says at no point was she fearful for her own safety, and that her concern for others would have overruled any personal concerns.

Sgt. Ray Jullien of the Lewisporte RCMP detachment confirmed the details of the account. He said the driver of the vehicle was remanded into custody for the night and was released in the morning with a promise to appear in court.